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Forget Electric Cars, Electric Roads Are Coming
The biggest problem with electric cars is that their range is limited because they can only store so much electricity in their batteries, without the battery size growing prohibitively large. But, what if the energy storage burden was shifted from our overworked cars to the road?
Researchers at the Energy Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University are working on just such a solution, called electrified roads.
Electric vehicles, or EVs, could pick up small amounts of electricity as they drive over charging pads buried under the asphalt and connected to the electrical grid. Researchers say that a continuously available power supply would allow EVs to cut battery size as much as 80 percent, drastically reducing vehicle cost.
“Basically you get power directly from the grid to the motors as the car moves,” said Hunter Wu, a Utah State researcher who was recruited from The University of Auckland in New Zealand, where the technology was pioneered, to further develop the concept. “You can travel from the West Coast to the East Coast continuously without charging.”
Nicola Tesla first discovered the principles of wireless charging, or inductive power transfer, in the late 19th Century. It works by creating an electromagnetic charging field that transfers energy to a receiving pad set to the same frequency.
The only question is, will electric roads also allow us to do loop-de-loops?
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Paul Scott on May 5th, 2011 8:25 pm
I’ve driven the Toyota RAV4 EV for 8 years and recently bought a LEAF. Full disclosure, I started selling the Nissan LEAF last year in Santa Monica.)
A nominal 100 mile range, coupled with a robust and ubiquitous charging infrastructure, thoroughly meets the needs of over 80% of drivers. You really have to take a good test drive in a Volt or LEAF to know how good these cars are. The rare long distance drive is easily handles with a plug in hybrid like the Volt or upcoming PHEV Prius. Within a decade, there will exist a dozen or more PHEVs from which to choose.
Considering that young people are more apt to take the long trips in a car, that reduces the need even further. Many oldsters, such as this old hippy, prefer to fly or take the new fast, smooth electric trains.
All that said, I’d like to get a cost benefit study of this technology. I charge my RAV inductively, although through a paddle. There is a slight efficiency loss with inductive charging, but it’s small enough to mostly ignore. Does this inductive technology have the same, or more loss? What does it cost? Are the power needs affordable? Remember that large power draws have to pay “demand” charges in their rates, so the cost of the energy is maybe going to be high. Boy, that would create a huge demand for solar! Imagine the right of way all along the track from coast to coast covered with PV. In the morning, it would wake up and generate more and more energy as the sun rose and traveled across the country. This is peak demand energy, the most valuable kind. It’s up to three times more valuable/kWh than off-peak night time energy.
Streetcar Eddie on May 6th, 2011 5:03 am
What a dumb idea. Imagine all the infrastructure necessary to build such roads. We would exhaust all the known copper (and other) reserves to just do the interstates. We would be far better off with a national high speed rail system, forget about cars.
Angela Shupe on May 6th, 2011 9:37 am
I don’t think the idea is stupid, but I imagine it would cost quite a bit. To replace the main roads with the right type of road in each state would take a lot of time, too. I am not sure it is the most effective idea, but it is a step in the right direction.
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